An artistically striking but enigmatic tale about ice cream.
Assorted schoolchildren reveal their favorite ice cream flavors in this picture book.
Mr. Chris, whose body consists of a tentacled teal torso, appears in his classroom: a plaid fuchsia-and-orange collage background framed with digital snowflakes. Nothing indicates recognizable physical reality. “WHAT KIND OF ICE CREAM DO YOU LIKE? I KNOW YOU HAVE A FAVORITE, DON’T YOU, MIKE?” Mr. Chris screams at a student. What follows is a psychedelic listing of ice creams, recited by a group of students. Though the structure of Fudgewilli’s text gestures toward the couplet, the rhymes are always slightly off: “chocolate/apocalypse,” “vanilly/gorilla,” “cookie dough/tootsie roll.” Each student’s physical form surprises; “mike” is a gremlinlike, multicolored child whose mirror images multiply around a photograph of mysteriously green chocolate ice cream. And “brittany robinson” is a creature with small bird feet drawn on a scrap of paper. Another child, “gary,” is a winged toe. The frightful faces are mostly unnerving but inoffensive, with the startling exception of “steven,” a humanoid character whose favorite ice cream is “water-otter-otter-melon” and whose eyeless pink face stares through a brown mask with large white lips. It certainly looks like blackface—though who the joke is on is unclear in this context-free, Bosch-like assembly of ghastly schoolkids. The light inanity of the text becomes intriguing when set inside the nightmarish realm of the convulsing, uncredited collages; hallucinogenic font changes; and intensifying color contrasts. Still, the story’s purpose remains inscrutable.
An artistically striking but enigmatic tale about ice cream.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73422-082-7
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Srfprty
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Pretty. Pretty forgettable too.
An abbreviated if recognizable version of the classic, with fine-lined illustrations augmented by a set of pull-up minivistas.
Safran’s adaptation preserves the original’s general structure and bits of the dialogue and verse, though Alice’s encounters with a hookah-smoking caterpillar, “Father William,” the Lobster Quadrille, the Mock Turtle, and much else are gone. Taylor illustrates it with spot vignettes, plus an inset cover tableau and four pop-up constructs that pull open to raise and reveal multilayered scenes. Into these, Taylor places small renditions of the chubby White Rabbit, a cross-eyed Mad Hatter, and the rest in static poses while outfitting Alice in pink ballet slippers and a flow-y, sleeveless polka-dot shift. The effect is decidedly bland. Children after more flavorful takes on the tale, particularly those spiced with 3-D or other special effects, have a veritable banquet before them—from J. Otto Siebold’s quirky Alice in Pop-Up Wonderland (2003) and Robert Sabuda’s masterwork of paper engineering (2003) to the spectacular e-outings Alicewinks (2013) and Alice for the iPad (2010).
Pretty. Pretty forgettable too. (Pop-up picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: June 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-85707-814-5
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Tango Books
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2015
That it’s the “best-known and best-loved bridge in the world” is arguable; if it is, one wonders why it needs a...
Gray bridges abound, but there’s only one major one that’s orange—and here’s how that happened.
Striving for whimsy when he’s not being patronizing—“It was a long trip, but the pieces of steel did not mind, for they are inanimate objects”—Eggers tracks the building of the Golden Gate Bridge from rejected design proposals (“It was functional, but it was grotesque”) on. Along with giving the bridge’s innovative features a light once-over, he introduces the project’s three main architects. One had designed the Manhattan Bridge, “believed to be in or near New York City,” as Eggers coyly puts it; another led the populist campaign to keep the finished structure the International Orange with which its prefabricated steel parts were (and still are) coated because it “somehow looked right.” Whether young readers will find these observations, or such lines as, “Sometimes the things humans make baffle even the humans who make them,” illuminating is anybody’s guess. In broad collages assembled from large pieces of cut paper, Nichols illustrates the enterprise with stylized portrait heads and abstract views of golden hills set against blue (or sometimes gray) expanses of sea and sky. The finished bridge poses grandly in several.
That it’s the “best-known and best-loved bridge in the world” is arguable; if it is, one wonders why it needs a self-conscious, 104-page picture book to draw attention to it. (jacket poster) (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-940450-47-6
Page Count: 104
Publisher: McSweeney’s
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
